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David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation. (snip) One of the conspicuous failings in the past few years has been the absence of a second party making principled decisions on when to support and when to oppose the president. McCain has the best opportunity -- and the best credentials -- to restore this. (snip) It is up to McCain to choose when and how to exert the influence he commands......

The following is from a retired Border Patrol agent who specialized in criminal intelligence. If you choose to watch the video, please be warned that it is extremely graphic.

Can Democrats possibly screw up the 2010 election any more? Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who replaced Chris Dodd as the Democrat candidate for Senator from Connecticut, today was outed as a potential liar, on of all things, his military record in Vietnam. From the New York Times, no less:

WASHINGTON -- In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, The Washington Post, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right. This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Post op-ed column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is...

"I want to speak up for the American people and say: No, we really do have some good common-sense solutions. I can be a messenger for that. Don't have to have a title to do it." This is a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past. There are times when the American people are looking for something more: for an Eisenhower, who liberated Europe; an FDR or a Kennedy or a Bush, all unashamed aristocrats; or an Obama, with eloquence and brains. But in the present mood of the country, Palin is by all odds...

"It came as no surprise to anyone who knows her that Napolitano handled the incident and its aftermath with aplomb. In the years I have known her, she has managed every challenge that has come her way with the same calm command that she showed in this instance. If there is anyone in the administration who embodies President Obama's preference for quiet competence with "no drama," it is Janet Napolitano."

Washington Post columnist David Broder writes a love note to Janet Napolitano Most Americans got their first prolonged look at Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, last weekend. After a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam ignited a concealed fuse as the plane approached Detroit for a landing, apparently intending to blow it up and kill all aboard, it fell to Napolitano to take charge of the federal response. It came as no surprise to anyone who knows her that Napolitano handled the incident and its aftermath with aplomb. In the years I have known her, she...

In the last year or so of George W. Bush’s second term, commentators used to talk a lot about the conspicuous scarcity of other Republicans willing to stand up and defend him. I never thought we’d see Barack Obama face the same problem before his first year was over. But as Obama’s approval scores — 50 percent in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll — sink, it is getting harder and harder to find a full-throated supporter of the president. You need go no further from here than the op-ed page of Thursday’s Washington Post to see what I mean....

It is now as certain as anything can be in politics that 2010 will be a painful year for Democrats — a year of high unemployment, staggering deficits and a growing list of casualties from an unresolved war. Inside the Obama administration, that fact — and its implication of a sharply reduced congressional majority — is acknowledged. Strategy sessions now turn to the chance of curing some or all of these liabilities before the president faces the voters in 2012. The economic calamity has been evident for more than a year. The housing bubble collapsed before Obama was even elected...

Every time you think politics has hit a new low, it finds a way to go lower. I thought we had reached the nadir last month when Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "You lie!" at President Barack Obama while he was speaking to a joint session of Congress. But then The New York Times caught me up on what has been happening in New Jersey. Campaigns there are rarely elevated affairs, but the battle between Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Christopher Christie has sunk to new depths. As the Times pointed out, a television ad for...

I hope that President Obama and his family enjoyed their week's vacation on Martha's Vineyard, because what he faces on his return to Washington is sheer hell. Obama confronted a daunting situation when he took office back in January, with a sickening economic slide and the real threat of financial crisis. But he was buoyed then by the momentum of his historic election victory and the widespread hope that it stirred -- even among those who had not voted for him. He launched a series of ambitious initiatives and, while only the economic stimulus package came to quick fruition, there...

With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat to America's economic future. That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin. The real threat is the monstrous debt resulting from the slump in revenue and the staggering sums being committed by Washington to rescuing embattled...

Opinion: Looks like the honeymoon is over for Obama David Broder The Daily Republic Published Wednesday, March 18, 2009 WASHINGTON — Two months into his presidency, it is far too soon to make any judgments about Barack Obama’s prospects. All we really know is that he has assembled the rudiments of an administration and launched a batch of ambitious but unproven initiatives. But it is not too soon to say that the Obama honeymoon period is over. His critics in Washington and around the world have found their voices, and they are subjecting his administration to the kind of skeptical...

<p>Two months into his presidency, it is far too soon to make any judgments about Barack Obama's prospects.</p> <p>All we really know is that he has assembled the rudiments of an administration and launched a batch of ambitious but unproven initiatives.</p>

Two months into his presidency, it is far too soon to make any judgments about Barack Obama's prospects. All we really know is that he has assembled the rudiments of an administration and launched a batch of ambitious but unproven initiatives. But it is not too soon to say that the Obama honeymoon is over. His critics in Washington and around the world have found their voices, and they are subjecting his administration to the kind of skeptical questioning that is normal for chief executives once they settle into their jobs. Obama still enjoys broad public support, but it is...

And then Tuesday, we learned that Roland Burris, a guy who has been hanging around in Illinois politics for decades, saw in all of this an opportunity to vault himself into the Senate -- no matter what Obama and every other Democrat from Springfield to Washington thought. Everyone, including Obama, has been exceedingly polite in their public comments about Burris. I have known him for years and I like him. But I have never been confused about the level of his talent. He was elected as far back as 1978 as state comptroller and stayed in that low-visibility office for...

exerpt: But I am struck by how lucky this country is, at the moment, that the president-elect is a super-smart person like Barack Obama. With each passing day, it becomes more evident that even the smartest and most experienced managers of the American economy are struggling to understand -- and fix -- what has gone wrong in our markets.

David Broder, the Washington Post political editor who is considered the Dean of American political reporters told Trinity University students here that there is no such thing as 'media bias,' 1200 WOAI's Michael Board reports. "I have spent almost fifty years of my life covering campaigns with other people," Broder told 1200 WOAI news. "I don't think there is a serious problem with ideological or political bias." Broder's comments come as the issue of media bias has become a key issue in the Presidential race. John McCain's campaign manager called out the New York Times earlier this week, saying the...

When Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, lists the November races that will swell his party's majority, New Hampshire is one of the first he brags about. Here on the ground, it looks a lot less certain that Democrat Jeanne Shaheen will cut short the promising career of Sen. John Sununu, namesake son of a White House chief of staff under the first President Bush. Shaheen, a former governor who lost a close race to Sununu six years ago in an environment much more hospitable to Republicans, was a double-digit favorite early...

"And ultimately, the best corrective to overly negative campaigns are the American people, who are not interested in a lot of bickering, but are interested in who's got the best answers for the country." I think everybody would agree to that last point.

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture. Foreign leaders, who can read the polls as well as anyone, would go out of their way not to embarrass a man who may, six months from now, be president of the United States. Obama prepares thoroughly for the big occasions. He is almost always well-briefed, and he was traveling in sharp company — with Sens. Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel — so you knew he would be thoroughly ready for these...

In her Sunday column this week, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell responds to charges of improper money-making from special-interest groups against two of the newspaper's stars, David Broder and Bob Woodward. The allegations were carried in the current issue of Harper's by Ken Silverstein, the magazine's Washington editor. Both Broder and Woodward recently took buyouts from the paper but remain as contract workers. The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Howell observes: "Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances...

On the day last week when Hillary Clinton suffered the first of two costly defections by Indiana superdelegates, I went to see an old friend working in her national campaign. I knew he was loyal to her, but I also calculated that if he were guaranteed anonymity, he would give me an honest answer to the vexing question: Does the Clinton camp still see any realistic way she can deny Barack Obama the Democratic nomination without blowing up the party? The question is not new, but it has gained force week by week, as the ranks of uncommitted delegates dwindle...

On the day last week when Hillary Clinton suffered the first of two costly defections by Indiana superdelegates, I went to see an old friend working in her national campaign. I knew he was loyal to her, but I also calculated that if he were guaranteed anonymity, he would give me an honest answer to the vexing question: Does the Clinton camp still see any realistic way she can deny Barack Obama the Democratic nomination without blowing up the party? The question is not new, but it has gained force week by week as the ranks of uncommitted delegates dwindle...

In his achingly slow steps toward repudiating the repugnant words of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama has run the risk of serious political damage by leaving vague what it was that attracted him to this outspoken critic of American society. In the rational part of Wright's appearance Monday at the National Press Club, before he got to the self-justification and the denunciations of our government and the nation's values, Wright offered clues to the answer to that question. They came in the form of his succinct interpretation of the historic goals of the black church. These...

While the eyes of the political world were focused on Pennsylvania last week, I played hooky for a day at the invitation of the Lee County Library and bumped into a story as revealing in its way as the latest round in the struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Among other things, it explains why John McCain found it useful to spend last week touring poverty-stricken areas in the South, where Republicans rarely go. On the same day that Pennsylvanians gave Clinton a victory that still left unclear who will eventually be the Democratic nominee, voters in Mississippi's 1st...

You would never realize how big the stakes are in today's winner-take-all Florida Republican primary if you judged only the behavior of the leading presidential candidates these last few days. Their final pre-primary debate was bland to the point of apathy. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and even iconoclastic Ron Paul were on their best behavior — as if oblivious to what the 57 delegates available in Florida could mean to anyone who pulls out a plurality victory.

It was fascinating to watch the top contenders for the Democratic nomination discuss their concept of the presidency during a recent MSNBC debate in Las Vegas. But it was also stunning to realize that the three who have survived the shakeout process - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards - have not a day of chief executive experience behind them. By contrast, the Republican field is loaded with people who are accustomed to being in charge of large organizations. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were governors of their home states of Massachusetts and Arkansas, Rudy Giuliani served as the...

But it was also stunning to realize that the three current and former senators who have survived the shakeout process -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- have not a day of chief executive experience behind them.

David Broder has breaking news in the presidential race. He has discovered, through his own investigation that — brace yourselves — none of the leading Democratic candidates for President has executive experience. He points out that this leaves the Democrats at a serious disadvantage to their Republican counterparts: It was fascinating to watch the three top contenders for the Democratic nomination discuss their concept of the presidency during Tuesday night’s MSNBC debate in Las Vegas. But it was also stunning to realize that the three current and former senators who have survived the shakeout process — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama...

It may seem paradoxical, but New Hampshire is poised to close down the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and launch a wide-open Republican contest. The difference is that Barack Obama, the winner of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, can well repeat his victory over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards here. But Mike Huckabee faces much steeper odds in duplicating his Iowa win on the Republican side. A second Romney loss would effectively end the former Massachusetts governor's candidacy -- a victim of a campaign that lost its credibility along with its ideological definition. But McCain and Huckabee have yet to...

The catch: They continue their I-shall-not-dignify-that-with-a-response attitude towards charges of bias coming from the right. They react rather vigorously to such charges from the left, of course. By way of background, part one: Right-leaning bloggers have been critiquing the media -- not just in terms of opinion, but in baldly mistating easily-verified facts, for years. By way of background, part two: Left-leaning bloggers began doing this fairly recently in order to "work the refs" a bit and push reporters back towards their natural left-leaning state. By way of background, part three: Recently the left-leaning Radar Online quoted Thomas Edsall as...

... then we should really re-examine our testicular fortitude. Der Spiegel excerpts passages from Henryk Broder's new book on the Western response to radical Islamism, pungently titled, Hurray, We're Capitulating! The book has not yet been published in English, but DS gives us a translation on their English-language site. It cogently and somewhat angrily notes the low points in Western dhimmitude: "Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the 'clash of civilizations,' a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how...

The change of command in Iraq offers an opportunity to move past the divisive domestic debate over the deployment of more troops to Baghdad and instead put the pressure where it belongs -- on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. When Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, goes before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, lawmakers are likely to hear a very different presentation from what they usually get from the Pentagon. Rather than ask the senators to grant him free rein to operate as he wishes, Petraeus is ready, I am told, to invite...

<p>Conspiracy theories flourish in politics, and most of them have no more basis than spring training hopes for the Chicago Cubs.</p> <p>For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition.</p>

onspiracy theories flourish in politics, and most of them have no more basis than spring training hopes for the Chicago Cubs. Whenever things turn dicey for Republicans, they complain about the "liberal media" sabotaging them. And when Democrats get in a jam, they take up Hillary Clinton's warnings about a "vast right-wing conspiracy." For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition. Now at least one count in that indictment has...

My weekend visitor was one of the founders of the postwar Republican Party in the South, one of those stubborn men who challenged the Democratic rule in his one-party state. He was conservative enough that in the great struggle for the 1952 nomination, his sympathies were with Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, not Dwight D. Eisenhower. He has lived long enough to see Republicans elected as senator and governor of his state and to see a Republican from the Sun Belt behemoth of Texas capture the White House. His profession won't let him speak with his name attached, but he...

But Wilson, a former senator, rejected that charge at a Hudson Institute talk in Washington. And, despite being a Bush appointee (to the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel), he called on his former colleagues to resist White House pressure on the House and Senate to pass a compromise bill that preserves elements of the president's more generous approach and includes a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already here. He said the only reason the Senate voted for a more generous bill in the first place was that many senators had been ``intimidated.'' Wilson said...

The two sides of Hillary Rodham Clinton -- the opposites that make her potential presidential candidacy such a gamble -- came into sharp focus Tuesday morning at the National Press Club. For the better part of an hour, the senator from New York held forth in a disquisition on energy policy that was as overwhelming in its detail as it was ambitious in its reach. But the buzz in the room was not about her speech -- or her striking appearance in a lemon-yellow pantsuit -- but about the lengthy analysis of the state of her marriage to Bill Clinton...

The Washington Post today follows up the Times frontpager on the Clinton marriage with a column by veteran political commentator David Broder, titled "The Shadow of a Marriage," in which Broder hints that Bill Clinton has a girlfriend. He does so in a passage that critiques the Times piece: It touched only lightly on the former president's friendship with Canadian politician Belinda Stronach. Then Broder says that the character of the Clinton marriage is the "elephant in the room" with Senator Clinton—and thus, fair game in the political process. I genuinely wish the Clintons luck on this one. I'm never...

The debate over illegal immigration could not conceivably take place without the Democrats playing the race card. Harry Reid did just that with regards to making English the official language of the United States. What she fails to realize, however, is that the Democrats have played the race card so often in recent years that the American people are desensitized to it. The country has come together on the issue of illegal immigration and the momentum will not be stopped by the likes of Dingy Harry. The Democrats are fond of pointing out that this nation was built by immigrants....

<p>On Monday, to mark the third anniversary of President Bush’s appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a press release in which Bush’s text was counterposed with barbed reminders of everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since that boast.</p>

"The conservative screamers who shot down [Harriet] Miers can argue that they were fighting only for a 'qualified' nominee. . . . But whatever the rationale, the fact is that they short-circuited the confirmation process by raising hell with Bush. . . . A cabal of outsiders--a lynching squad of right-wing journalists, self-sanctified religious and moral organizations, and other frustrated power-brokers--[rolled] over the president they all ostensibly support." --David Broder, Washington Post, Nov. 2 Nothing like the calming tones of The Dean to bring context and a needed sense of perspective to the proceedings. In his comments on Sunday's "Meet...

"The conservative screamers who shot down [Harriet] Miers can argue that they were fighting only for a 'qualified' nominee. . . . But whatever the rationale, the fact is that they short-circuited the confirmation process by raising hell with Bush. . . . A cabal of outsiders--a lynching squad of right-wing journalists, self-sanctified religious and moral organizations, and other frustrated power-brokers--[rolled] over the president they all ostensibly support." --David Broder, Washington Post, Nov. 2       Nothing like the calming tones of The Dean to bring context and a needed sense of perspective to the proceedings. In his comments on Sunday's "Meet the Press" and in his...

The question of whether Judge John Roberts is qualified to be chief justice of the United States has been rendered moot by his performance in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. He is so obviously -- ridiculously -- well-equipped to lead government's third branch that it is hard to imagine how any Democrats can justify a vote against his confirmation. Start with his intellect. This is a man whose knowledge of constitutional law goes well beyond his intimate familiarity with seemingly every Supreme Court decision. It is rooted in a thorough understanding of American history. He quotes Hamilton in the Federalist...

Under the editorship of Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard has become one of the most consistently rewarding political journals. It is a place you can go for a predictably conservative view on certain issues, from the wisdom of the U.S. intervention in Iraq to sustaining the life of Terri Schiavo. But it is also on occasion a portal for the debates that are roiling the governing majority.In its 10th anniversary issue, now on the stands, Kristol invited a number of its regular contributors to answer: "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last...

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, credible private experts are forecasting a federal budget deficit of $500 billion for this year, a sharp reminder of the government's fiscal folly. For all the deserved criticism the Bush administration has received for its tardy and ragged response to the storm's ravages on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the long-term costs to the nation of the reckless disregard both the president and Congress have shown toward paying the nation's bills may be even greater. In time those forced from their homes in Louisiana and Mississippi will be returned, and a degree of...

...Here is what should happen: The Democratic Senate leadership should agree voluntarily to set aside the continued threat of filibustering the seven Bush appointees to the federal appeals courts ... In return, they (Democrats) should get a renewed promise from the president that he will not bypass the Senate by offering any more recess appointments to the bench ... (Democrats also get a) pledge from Republican Senate leaders to consider each such nominee individually, carefully and with a guarantee of extensive debate in coming months.

“And I thank the poor reporters, if you can understand what I am saying. They are always asking later, ‘Mr. President: What did he say and how did he say it?’” — Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), acknowledging that his heavy Southern accent causes problems for Senate stenographers, as he delivered his farewell speech yesterday after 38 years in office Post’s Broder bids goodbye to reporting Famed scribe will continue to write columns regularly First, it was Tom Brokaw deciding this would be his last campaign before stepping down as NBC-TV’s “Nightly News” anchor. Then, it was The New York Times’s...